{"id":609912,"date":"2026-07-29T12:02:12","date_gmt":"2026-07-29T12:02:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/609912\/"},"modified":"2026-07-29T12:02:12","modified_gmt":"2026-07-29T12:02:12","slug":"murderer-says-reference-to-conor-mcgregor-in-trial-brought-toxic-masculinity-baggage-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/609912\/","title":{"rendered":"Murderer says reference to Conor McGregor in trial brought \u2018toxic masculinity\u2019 baggage \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

A murderer who bragged he punched his victim \u201clike Conor McGregor<\/a>\u201d has argued his trial jury should not have heard the reference as it brought \u201ca degree of baggage\u201d which indicated \u201ctoxic masculinity\u201d.<\/p>\n

Maurice Boland\u2019s lawyers submitted that while his trial was taking place, McGregor was involved in much publicised civil proceedings in the High Court<\/a> in which a jury ultimately found him civilly liable for the rape of Nikita Hand.<\/p>\n

They said that while the jury was considering the facts in Boland\u2019s case, there was \u201can ongoing media circus\u201d around the civil trial and the publicity and discussion led to people developing \u201copinions and conclusions\u201d about McGregor.<\/p>\n

The jury at the civil trial determined McGregor raped Hand in a hotel room in December 2018 and awarded her just under \u20ac250,000 in damages.<\/p>\n

Boland\u2019s counsel, Michael Bowman, told the Court of Appeal<\/a> on Tuesday that, as a result of the civil proceedings, McGregor\u2019s name brought \u201ca degree of baggage communicative of toxic masculinity\u201d and \u201cbravado\u201d.<\/p>\n

The State, however, has argued the evidence was \u201ceminently admissible\u201d and the trial judge made no error in allowing it to go before the jury.<\/p>\n

Boland was jailed for life by Judge Eileen Creedon in December 2024 after he was convicted of murdering Cian Gallagher (26) following two Central Criminal Court<\/a> trials. His first trial in April the same year ended in a jury disagreement.<\/p>\n

The attack happened on November 2nd, into the early hours of November 3rd, 2022, and Gallagher died in hospital eight days later.<\/p>\n

Boland (39) of Bridgeview Close, Tallow, Co Waterford<\/a>, had pleaded not guilty to murder but guilty to the manslaughter of Gallagher on Barrack Street in Tallow.<\/p>\n

His lawyers had argued he was guilty of unlawful killing, not murder, because they said there was no evidence of his intent to kill or cause serious injury.<\/p>\n

The pathology evidence in the trial showed Gallagher died from injuries sustained when he fell and banged his head on the ground after Boland punched him.<\/p>\n

However, prosecution counsel Bernard Condon told the jury the victim did not \u201cspontaneously fall\u201d. He was pursued by Boland who had earlier in the night been drunkenly threatening to \u201cbeat the sh*t out\u201d of a patron at a bar, and \u201csmash his face in\u201d.<\/p>\n

Following the assault, Boland bragged to three young men who arrived on the scene that he had hit Gallagher \u201clike Conor McGregor in the UFC\u201d.<\/p>\n

The Court of Appeal viewed CCTV footage of the attack and heard submissions from both sides before reserving judgment in the case.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A murderer who bragged he punched his victim \u201clike Conor McGregor\u201d has argued his trial jury should not…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":609913,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[40],"tags":[9,10,4003,21031,18,13,14,6,10476,19,17,11,12,15,16,5,7,8],"class_list":["post-609912","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-breaking-news","tag-breakingnews","tag-conor-mcgregor","tag-court-of-appeal","tag-eire","tag-featured-news","tag-featurednews","tag-headlines","tag-high-court","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-latest-news","tag-latestnews","tag-main-news","tag-mainnews","tag-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topstories"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/117003167246698592","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/609912","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=609912"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/609912\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/609913"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=609912"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=609912"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=609912"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}